Windows 2003 Error Message Insufficient Memory on Xcopy, Enter: XXCOPY,
Over the weekend I was working on a seriously f-ed up Windows 2003 server. Let’s just say that this basket held all of this companies eggs. I needed to copy off ALL the data from the 1TB Raid array. I had 2TB in eSata drives connected to the machine. I went to run a simple XCOPY batch file and all it kept doing was opening a dos window and closing pretty fricking fast. WTF?
I hit Window-R and typed CMD. I pasted the first line of my batch file into the command prompt like so:
xcopy e:\users\* x:\server32\\users /D /E /C /F /H /Y
I got back Insufficient Memory and 0 files copied. This box has 4gb of memory and less than 1gb in use. I hit up Google who had be try disabling my Antivirus to no avail.
I then found a XCOPY replacement called XXCopy (found here). It says that it should help me with this exact error. It also says XXcopy is faster than Xcopy and can deal with file names longer than 256 character. So instead of counting the paths and filenames characters I downloaded and installed it. I replaced the XCOPY with XXCopy in my scripts and they took off like a bullet. I haven’t gotten into it yet but it does all of XCOPY’s switches and then some as you can see below.


March 9, 2009 - 6:27 am
Thank for the tip. Since xcopy makes me sick, i’m using robocopy which has several parameters too.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
March 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am
According to their website this is supposed to be better than RoboCopy.
Good to see you still around AstroMan!
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March 9, 2009 - 9:09 pm
Only thing I’d be worried about is accidentally typing in XXXCopy, never know what that will turn up :) Good find though, I always used Robocopy, I’ll have to try XXcopy out.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
March 10th, 2009 at 4:08 am
Thanks for stopping by Rob. I used it for several of my larger scripts yesterday – and I can say it is a lot faster than roboCopy.
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March 10, 2009 - 6:45 am
I swear by xxcopy. Makes transferring files so easy and you can do just about any sort of copy, move, etc. with the switches. My favorite is /pb so I can see the progress bar! Its nice to know how long it will take for the gigs of stuff to copy.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
March 11th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Guess what? I have a new favorite switch now as well! Thanks /pb is awesome for a quick overview of where you are @!
Thanky Tyler you Rock!
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March 10, 2009 - 3:29 pm
Thanks for this – I had actually heard somewhere about xxcopy a few months ago, but didn’t really believe it would be any better. I still shouldn’t have to hack and replace basic parts of an operating system to get it to perform, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
I’ve always found it kind of ironic that Linux with ntfs3g can do the above on an NTFS disk (fast!), where xcopy fails miserably.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
March 11th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Agreed! Microsoft just needs to keep up with the 3rd party apps and buy them and incorporate them in to their OS’s.
BTW: If your brain runs linux what happens if you get rooted?
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June 9, 2009 - 10:03 am
I want to find good pop music. Help me please.
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June 10, 2009 - 5:36 am
Nice. Ill check that out. I’ve used robocopy before though.
What amazes me is after all so many years Microsoft hasnt upgraded the copy function. If you use their regular copy, and it cant write or overwrite a file, it cancels the whole batch job. ANNOYING!!!
Wonder if its upgraded in Windows 7? I havnt tried.
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